Red numbers: China slump results in billions in losses for investor Softbank | news

—A loss of the equivalent of almost nine billion euros at the business-dominating Vision Fund broke Softbank in a deficit of 397 billion yen (equivalent to 3.03 billion euros) in the past quarter. In the same period of the previous year there was still a profit of around 4.8 billion euros on the balance sheet. “We are not proud,” said Softbank boss Masayoshi Son of the Vision Fund balance sheet on Monday. You are in the middle of a blizzard, he emphasized.

For one thing, there were fewer IPOs between July and September, and many of the technology stocks Softbank is invested in lost value. The shares of the largest Softbank investment alone – the Chinese technology giant Alibaba – as well as the transport service broker Didi and the online retailer Coupang lost around a third of their value in the past quarter. The increasing regulation in the People’s Republic primarily affects technology stocks.

However, there are also bright spots. These include the Indian driver service provider Ola and the logistics company Delhivery, both of which are targeting the aisle on the trading floor. “The pipeline is very robust,” assured the CFO of the Vision Fund, Navneet Govil, in an interview with Reuters and also looked at the upcoming SPAC IPO of the Uber competitor Grab. Govil is currently concentrating primarily on the second Vision Fund, which recently invested money in the Berlin solar startup Enpal, the logistics service provider Forto and the e-scooter company Tier.

Softbank is now starting another share buyback program and wants to buy back almost 15 percent of its own paper and spend around 7.6 billion euros on it. In the second fiscal quarter at the end of September, the Japanese had also risen to become the largest single shareholder in the Bonn DAX group Deutsche Telekom behind the federal government. Softbank wants to work more closely with Telekom in the future.

Tokyo (Reuters)